Archive for April, 2009

This is a list of songs and bands that I have been introduced to by my friends. It’s by no means complete, and I have no particular reason for writing it other than I’m waiting for a really huge file to download. To qualify for the list, you have to have introduced me to something that I still listen to at least once a year

So, recently I was helping a friend port their web site to Apache 2.0 and came across a link to NetAddiction’s internet addiction quiz. Now, I don’t think this quiz really applies to me – after all, you’re not an addict unless you *want* to stop (and I only seem to when I’m at my least sane), but I did start to think about the irony of delivering a web site – or a blog – on internet addiction.

No other addiction that I know of lets you do this. This is like your drug dealer taking you to a NA meeting, and passing you some of your drug-o-choice while *e talks to you about recovery. It’s just *funny*. What’s more, I’m not sure what total abstinance from the internet would look like. The only time recently I’ve been seperated from the net, I had the conpensating factor of being in interactive discussion with people, face to face, all the time – so I didn’t really miss the communication aspect of it.

If civilization falls, I’m certain the ham radio people are determined to keep the internet up anyway. They’ll probably succeed, too – I mean, we’re talking about people who managed to write a full-fledged telnet & ftp server and client, plus router, that fits on a floppy disk and runs on a 8088. Nicely. One can imagine what a solar-powered KAQ9 node might look like, pretty easily.

So, we discovered that Harry Potter is printed & bound in a much higher-quality way in the U.K., and naturally we wanted to buy book seven in the less cumbersome, more lasting U.K. edition. We tried to buy it in Oxford while we were there going ice skating, but we left it in a café. So, we ended up buying it in Kings Cross station on our way back from Edinburgh, which I thought was just the coolest thing ever.

Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon.. a game I’ve always wanted to try out.. runs just peachily. My old copies of Heros Quest run. Everything that I ever ran on a 8088/286 that will no longer speak to me now that I’m on a quad-core 80whoknowswhat86 works beautifully.

Once I get out of my current low-on-cash predicament, I am definitely donating to these people.

It occurs to me to wonder if windows 3.11 would run inside dosbox. Then it occurs to me that trying would be a good sign of a diseased mind. I also had a flicker of wondering if the very obsolete version of Cakewalk – for DOS – that me and Nicka used in our impromptu electronic music class at the New School would run under this – then I could go back and listen to all the music I wrote while I was at the New School.

Um, yah. I don’t think I really want to do that.

Then there’s the Software Toolworks word processer that I used to write so many documents while I was in high school. Let’s see, what other interesting things might be lurking.. I’m not not not going to play Castle Wolfinstien again. I don’t know which would be scarier.. if it completely terrified me *again* or if I was now totally immune to it. Hm. Scorched Earth in it’s original glory! And, of course, I could try and get C&C – the original – to work. Or the original GTA. Hm.. let me go wander into my disks from those years..

This, among other things, gives me a very real simulation of what communicating 9600 baud to a unix machine was like. What’s sick and wrong is that I’m *happy* about this. I mean, like, literally, it’s bringing me actual joy. I can’t explain it. I type commands and I can *watch* them being drawn. Shortly I may try out pine.. right now I’m logged into brig. There are a lot less people logged in than there were on the talker circuit the last time I talked to one at 9600 baud. I idly wonder if I will actually ever do this again. Still.. it’s good to see that old telemate squished font again.. perhaps I should go fullscreen for the total experience..

oh, wow.. that’s trippy.

Now if only there were a WWiV BBS I could telnet to..

OMG.. I just realized.. and yes, I know the rest of you were there already.. any bbs software would work with dosbox set up in incoming telnet mode. Of course, if it weren’t multi-line, it’d be really annoying to be limited to one user, after the internet we’ve experienced.. but.

I wonder if the backup copies of RoTDS are still any good after all these years? They’re on 1.4 meg floppies, stored in a airtight container.. there’s probably some chance of it..

I’ve always loved emulators – ever since my first exposure to the concept back in the early Amiga days. I especially love the idea of running emulators inside emulators, kind of like those nested egg things.

I recently downloaded a couple of C64 emulators and a number of d64 images, and was amused to note that many of the C64 games still retain their playability, and the C64 sound is still amazingly good. Actually, what really blew my mind was discovering people were stripping SID chips out of C64s in order to make synthesizers..

Anyway, as part of the searches that turned up said emulators and disk images, I discovered http://stella.sourceforge.net/ which is a Atari 2600 emulator – which has features that are being added for 2600 ROMs that are still being developed. Yes, people are still writing 2600 games.

Actually, after looking at the capabilities of the 2600, it amazes me that anyone ever managed to write games for it. According to the wikipedia, the Atari 2600 had 128 bytes of RAM.

So, http://www.earthtechproducts.com/bye-bye-standby.html is a product that claims it will save all that power that your appliances waste while in ‘standby’ mode. However, what it seems to actually be is a rebranded X10 system (note the ‘unit code’ and ‘house code’). So remind me – replacing one active power switch with another does me what good exactly?